Interview with BuddingBloggers + Contest

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Today we have Satish Gandham, UG student from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, a blogger @ GeniusHackers.com and the founder of BuddingBloggers, for the interview. Whats interesting about him is, through BuddingBloggers program, he is providing free domains and top class ad free hosting and lots of other freebies for able bloggers. He was kind enough to give us a interview. So we could ask more about his new service BuddingBloggers.Here is the interview:-

1. What is BuddingBloggers service about ?

The common problem faced by many bloggers during the initial stages of their blogging career is not having a reliable hosting and a domain name. So we are going to provide able bloggers with free domain names, top class ad free hosting, and freebies like premium wordpress themes. We motivate them and keep them inspired.

2. What are the long term benefits for you, as a company? Because you do not even show ads on the websites that are hosted by buddingbloggers!

We place our badge and our sponsors badge on the participants’ blogs, that will help us build our brand. We also place 5 sponsored links (Like the blog rolls) on the blogs, that will help us pay the domain and the hosting fee. We will also place ads on your support blog, right now there isn’t enough traffic any, I prefer clean look over the few cents from adsense.

3. Under Whose name will the domain be registered?

I’m currently registering the domains under my name, later they will be transferred to w3mixx.Com, My future web solutions company.

4. If someone already have a website, and needs to terminate as he/she is not able to pay for his domain and hosting. In such case will you provide free hosting, for already existing domain and transfer the hosted files to buddingbloggers?

Yes, We will renew the domain and provide free hosting.

5. Is your program permitted only for bloggers?

Our program focuses primarily on bloggers, but we are also open to people who are keen to make their web presence felt.

6. Please share about your business model.

We just want to help upcoming bloggers, and build a strong community, where a member of BuddingBloggers gets a special respect among the bloggers community.

7. How are you different from your competitors? And what do you do to standout off the crowd?

We provide top class web hosting. We will never shut down. Our service is almost ads free, we provide guidance and technical support. We organize contests to keep the bloggers motivated. We have prizes for the best and innovative bloggers.
For every participant we accept, we set some reserve money which will back him up in case if we ever have to quit this project. (This is not to hint that we are going to quit some day,” Hope for the best, plan for the worst”)
Your blog is completely secured with BuddingBloggers, we will never let you down.

8. Do you place any ads on the sponsored blogs?

We don’t place any ads except for the small sponsorship badge and 5 unobtrusive text links.

9. Is BuddingBloggers affected by the “First mover advantage theory”. As I see that there were and still are some other services giving free domain and hosting.

We haven’t done full fledged advertising yet, so can’t comment on that.

10. Why do you think people will use your service?

One obvious reason for which i would have wanted to use this service 2 years ago.
“They either don’t have money or don’t have the credit card or paypal to pay for the domain and hosting”

11. What are the common mistakes that people do, after registering their domain/hosting from buddingbloggers?

The common mistake I see is when they apply, Most of the applications we get are incomplete, and we simply ignore them.
They can not expect us to give a free domain name if they don’t have the patience to fill the application.
Once they are in, its our mistake if they screw up or not active. We either have not selected the right participant or we haven’t provided the right support.

12. How big / small is your company?

Our company is very small at the moment, I work from my hostel. HackMinded @ HackersLane.com and Saurabh @ vlovers.com (participants of BuddingBloggers) help me in reviewing the applications and maintaining the forum.
We don’t have any physical office right now. We may have one after I get out of college next year.

13. Can we know about the configuration of the server you use to host the websites?

We are currently having a VPS at Doreo, we will soon be moving to a dedicated server. We are planning to setup our own data center next year.

14. What about the uptime records of the servers?

Doreo has literally 100% up time, they are pricey and they provide the value for the price.

15. Do you think, a serious blogger who want to earn his living from his blog should go with his own domain & hosting or he has to obtain it from BuddingBloggers?

I think they should join BuddingBloggers, we are providing all the services for free including the technical support, joining BuddingBloggers will give more exposure to their blog.
We have lots of contests and freebies to keep them motivated.

16. What are your advice for a person who is new to blogging and want to create an account with blogspot.com or wordpress.com ?

If you are serious about blogging, buy your domain and start with wordpress as you blogging platform. If you cannot afford to buy a domain or hosting, give us a try.

17. What are the strict rules(policies) that your customers should follow, in order to be your customer?

Have the passion for blogging and blog regularly.

18. Earning opportunity using your services?

Participants can monetize their blog in every possible way, we don’t place ads from any ad networks. So they can use adsense, adbrite, bidvertiser, chitika, clicksor etc..
They can also write some sponsored posts.

19. What are the future plans for BuddingBloggers?

We want to build a strong community and give it a status where people take pride in being a member of BuddingBloggers. In future people who can afford to buy own domain and hosting may join BuddingBloggers just to be a part of the community.

20. You are having a blog which is already popular, did this add to the popularity of buddingbloggers?

Yep, I blog at GeniusHackers.Com, I think it is popular 🙂

21. Is this your full time job?

No, this is not my full time job. I’m doing my final year of Bachelors in Chemical Science and Technology @ Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

22. How do you define success?

Success is reaching the goals you set for yourself, at the end you should be happy with what you have done and be able to enjoy it.

23. Is there a story for the birth of BuddingBloggers. If so, then please share with our readers.

I started blogging for fun, my first blog was huntme.wordpress.com. I had no plan to monetize my blog initially, I started getting 1000+ page views per day within 10 days.
This traffic going useless bothered me, so I offered some downloads related to the posts on some free web hosting account and monetized that page with adsense. The results were quite good. When everything was going smoothly, one day my blog was suspended as i was diverting traffic from it to my downloads page with ads. After that i had to hang around with some free web hosts as I was not having a paypal account or credit card to pay. When this wordpress and other free posts kicked my blog out after getting established, all the time and effort I put in my blog for months was wasted.
Now I have an established blog and making enough money from it, so I wanted to prevent at least some bloggers from facing the problems I had in my early days of blogging career.

24. Please share the story of “your journey to blogging” and online world as a whole.

I started blogging just to improve my writing skills, I blogged for myself. Luckily people liked what i wrote and my blog was successful 🙂 , unfortunately that was banned. Then I had to hang around with some free webhosts, until I found a web hosting company accepting payment from online bank transfer. I bought a domain and hosting, from then there is no looking back 😀 .
I used to spend lot of my time on developing new content, tweaking the blog look and design. PHP and HTML/CSS that I learned as a hobby came in very handy in maintaining the blog. I won a premium theme in a contest at BlogOhBlog.Com, that premium theme gave a new look and authority to my blog. That’s the first tipping point of my blog. Then there was blogging idol contest @ DailyBlogTips.Com where we had to increase our feed count, I started a rapidshare give away. That kicked my feed count from 500 to 6000+ in 3 months (Unfortunately i couldnt win that contest as this idea stuck to me when the contest was about to close )

Hope you all enjoyed the interview. For more details and latest updates about the service visit BuddingBloggers. And please pass this interview link to all your friends to whom you think it will be of some use(ad free, Free hosting + Free Domain ). And please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Contest: Tweet this article and we will select one lucky winner and will give you a domain(of your choice) for free. The domain will be registered in your name for 1 year, and you are free to host it anywhere. I sponsored this contest to motivate people to spread the news about BuddingBloggers service, it will surly help many people.
Even though you are not in need of a domain, please make sure that you tweet about this article, it may help someone following you.

RT: Enter the chance to win a free domain. Follow @technotip, visit http://bit.ly/kM7dH and RT to help your followers

@Hariharakumar, yes you are right. And whats more important about BuddingBloggers service is, they provide ad free hosting along with good support and motivate them with contests and giveaways. A newbie blogger can learn a lot. Its like providing free quality education along mid-day meals for free 🙂

I just found out about your site while I was reading Daily Blog Tips and I was a bit surprised to see that you had an interview with Satish Gandham. I am a member of the Budding Bloggers community and I know that my boss, Satish is such a nice person, but this post enabled me to know more about him. 🙂

Thanks for sharing this wonderful article! Keep it up and more power to your site!

I am one of the participant of buddingbloggers.I never thought that satish bro will select me for buddingblogger ;-).I am glad that i am a part of such a great community. Satish is always ready to help others.Thanx buddy.

Nice Interview Satish…I was one of the first 10 participants accepted into the Buddingbloggers program. I am very happy with what I have achieved in 2 months. There is a long way to go..Cheers to Satish 🙂